Make That a Burger and a $5,000 Jacket to Go : Retailing: The Westside’s newest fashion emporium combines a restaurant, rock music and trendy clothes.
Bored with the Hard Rock Cafe? Been to Disneyland once too often? Sick of department stores and that incessant key-tickling piano music? Then maybe--just maybe--you’re ready for Boogies Diner.
But be advised: This new funk fashion emporium and eatery, which opened in Los Angeles on Friday in the new Westside Pavilion expansion, isn’t for the faint of heart.
Loud rock and roll music blares. Colors, ranging from lime green to purple, explode. Neon lights pulsate. And, for two bits, an animated fortune teller dispenses some advice.
Diners, meanwhile, apparently paying no heed to cholesterol or calories, put away piles of homemade meat loaf, hamburgers and fries. And shoppers, seemingly unfazed by the price tags and untouched by the lingering recession, browse through racks of trendy $100 jeans and far-out leather jackets for $2,000 to $5,000.
Bearing the motto “Eat Heavy, Dress Cool,” Boogies Diner aims to combine the fashion cachet of Bloomingdale’s of the 1980s with the panache of the Hard Rock Cafe to attract the thrill-seeking, hip, young and affluent shopper. It’s also quite happy to accept those who would love to pass for such, but can afford only an $8 burger and fries and a $15 Boogies Diner T-shirt.
“The stores are stocked with fashions that appeal to rock groups and celebrities,” says Paul Levine, president of the five-store chain, a division of Merry-Go-Round Enterprises, a Maryland retailer. “But it’s a fun place for everyone else to eat and shop, and watch other people do the same. We think we have something for everyone.”
Perhaps. But not everyone is convinced. Especially those who aren’t prone, say, to wearing micro miniskirts, beaded bra tops and psychedelic-colored leather jackets.
“If you’ve never watched MTV, you’ll feel out of place,” says Alan Millstein, a New York retail consultant who is closely following the month-old Boogies Diner in Manhattan and remains skeptical of the high-funk concept. “The only thing ‘classic’ in this place is the Coca-Cola served in the restaurant.”
Adds Kurt Barnard, another New York retail consultant: “This concept would have been a gold mine in the 1980s. But today’s shopper is much more frugal and conservative. This is the decade of the thrifty shopper.”
But Levine remains confident that Boogies, if well-located in affluent, tourist-rich urban centers, can be turned into one of those “gotta see,” hip-lifestyle destinations that will appeal to the local trade as well as attract the curious outsider, who will then spread the word of the new emporium on his chest.
Much like the Hard Rock Cafe, which seems to sell as many of its distinctive T-shirts as its expensive burgers, the meat and potatoes, so to speak, of Boogies Diners’ offerings is its logo merchandise. Fully 25% of the revenue at its other outlets in Aspen, Colo., which opened in 1987, Chicago, which opened in 1989, Washington, which opened last year, and Manhattan are generated by sales of $15 to $30 T-shirts, $30 to $70 sweat shirts and other items bearing its name.
Can hot tuna and haute couture collide--and survive? They have in Aspen, the ski and Rocky Mountain resort where Boogies’ annual sales average $800 per square foot of retail space and the average clothing sale is nearly $60.
But elsewhere, it may be a tougher sale.
“The problem for Boogies,” consultant Barnard says, “is that the kind of people who will eat there, can’t afford to shop there.”
